ProMarket Submission Guidelines: Publishing Competition and Market Power Analysis

Key Takeaways

• ProMarket is the blog of the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. It publishes essays, research summaries, and interviews on competition, market power, and regulatory capture.
• Strong submissions translate one finding (a paper, dataset, court ruling, or policy change) into an argument that policymakers and journalists can follow without a statistics background.
• Published essays typically run between about 800 and 1,500 words. A clear first paragraph and checkable evidence matter more than length.
• The venue fits researchers and practitioners who want policy reach. Authors who need peer-reviewed credit or a consumer audience should plan a second outlet.
• ProMarket's editorial frame treats concentrated corporate power as a problem worth analyzing. Contributors whose work ignores that frame will fit poorly.

1. Introduction

Market power has moved to the center of economic policy debate. Competition agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have updated merger guidelines, filed major platform cases, and commissioned studies of concentration. Behind those fights sits a body of research, and the researchers producing it face a timing problem. A journal article often takes a year or more to appear in print, while a newspaper op-ed compresses an argument into 700 words with no room for evidence. Commentary venues fill the space between, and ProMarket has become one of the most widely read of them in the competition policy field.

The submission stage is where many researchers stumble. Common failures look the same: a raw abstract pasted into prose, an advocacy piece with no data behind it, or a 4,000-word draft that no editor can cut without destroying it. This article explains what ProMarket publishes, how to turn a research project into a readable essay, what standards editors apply before publication, and how the venue compares with alternatives such as VoxEU, The Conversation, and specialist technology policy outlets. The goal is a submission that survives the first read.

2. What ProMarket publishes and who reads it

The Stigler Center, founded in 1985, is named after George Stigler, who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1982 and set out the theory of regulatory capture in his 1971 article "The Theory of Economic Regulation." That intellectual history shapes the blog's scope. Recurring topics include antitrust enforcement, digital platform regulation, labor market power, private equity, healthcare consolidation, finance, and the influence of business on politics.

Four formats cover most of what appears on the site:

• Essays. Op-ed style analysis by economists, legal scholars, and practitioners, usually tied to a current policy debate or ruling.
• Research summaries. Short write-ups of working papers and journal articles, often prepared with input from the authors.
• Interviews. Conversations with scholars and enforcers about recent work or decisions.
• Symposium collections. Groups of pieces organized around a theme, such as the contributions that followed the Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms report published in 2019.

The audience is professional rather than casual. Agency staff, journalists covering antitrust, academics, graduate students, and think tank analysts make up the core readership. That composition matters for how you write: a reader at a competition authority will skip rhetorical buildup and look for the finding.

Before pitching, read a month of recent posts. Note whether your angle duplicates something published already, and where your piece would extend an existing debate. Editors notice when a writer has done this homework, and the pitch shows it within two sentences.

3. Turning research into a publishable essay

The pieces that get published lead with one finding and its policy implication, then support that finding with evidence a lay reader can verify. Editors edit for readers with ten minutes of attention, and journalists quote what they can understand in a single pass. An argument buried in the ninth paragraph never gets cited.

A structure that holds up in practice:

• Opening paragraph. State the finding and why it matters now, in plain language, within the first three sentences.
• Body sections. Carry one claim per section, each supported by data, a case, or a documented example.
• Closing section. Give a concrete recommendation and state what the evidence cannot show.
• Sources. Link the paper, dataset, or ruling. Name coauthors when their work is used.

Consider a labor economist with a monopsony working paper. The journal version runs 40 pages with a full literature review. For ProMarket, the same project becomes: the measured wage gap and the number of firms or workers it covers, the mechanism behind it in two sentences, and the policy takeaway, for instance on noncompete enforcement. The literature review shrinks to one sentence with a link to the paper. Every number in the piece traces back to the study.

Aim for 1,000 to 1,500 words. Define each technical term on first use, write in active voice, and make every claim checkable. A reader who can verify your numbers will trust your conclusion; a reader who cannot will stop.

4. Review standards and why submissions get rejected

ProMarket is an edited commentary venue. Editors assess a pitch or draft for fit, evidence, and authorship before publication. Accepted pieces typically go through one or more revision rounds, and the author sees the edited text before it runs. Timing varies with the news cycle; a piece tied to a court ruling or an agency report published this week can move faster than an evergreen essay.

Most rejections trace back to a small set of problems:

• No finding: a survey of a field with no specific claim of its own.
• Jargon density: an abstract rewritten into prose with the technical vocabulary intact.
• Advocacy without evidence: a position piece that offers conclusions and no data, cases, or examples.
• Overlap: a topic the blog covered weeks earlier, with nothing new added.
• Excess length: a draft at twice the usual range that would need a cut too deep to survive.
• Missing credentials: no affiliation, no bio, no disclosure of funding or conflicts.

The disclosure point deserves its own sentence. Edited venues check for conflicts of interest, and undisclosed funding discovered after publication damages both the author and the outlet. State the relevant relationships in the pitch.

One boundary condition belongs in your planning. ProMarket's editorial frame is skeptical of concentrated corporate power, a stance that follows from the Stigler Center's founding mission. Contributors can and do disagree within that frame, and the site runs debates, but a piece that treats market concentration as harmless will struggle to find a foothold there.

5. Where ProMarket fits among competition policy outlets

No single venue covers every purpose. The table below compares ProMarket with other common destinations for competition and market power analysis.

Career stage and topic should drive the choice. PhD students and postdocs do well with research summary formats, which carry less argumentative weight and less risk. Senior scholars can sustain essay-length claims across 1,500 words. Former enforcers and practitioners are strongest with case-based pieces, where process knowledge substitutes for new data. On geography, ProMarket covers United States and European policy debates in depth; contributors from other jurisdictions fit when their evidence speaks to shared questions, such as how merger review standards treat vertical transactions.

6. Pre-submission checklist

The checklist below condenses the standards above into eight items. Work through it before sending anything to any edited venue, and to ProMarket in particular.

1. Read the last month of posts and confirm the angle is new or extends an existing debate.
2. Place the finding within the first three sentences of the draft, in plain language.
3. Limit each section to one claim and attach a source to every claim: a paper, dataset, case, or documented example.
4. Keep the draft between roughly 1,000 and 1,500 words.
5. Define every technical term on first use.
6. Add an author bio with affiliation, and disclose funding or conflicts of interest.
7. Link the underlying paper, data, or ruling.
8. State the limits of the evidence, including sample, jurisdiction, and time period.

Items 1 and 8 filter out the most submissions in practice. A piece that ignores the venue's recent output or hides its own weaknesses reads as unfinished.

7. FAQ

Q1. Do I need to be an economist to publish on ProMarket?

No. Bylines on the site include economists, legal scholars, political scientists, journalists, and practitioners. The test is whether the piece offers evidence or analysis that bears on competition and market power. A former regulator describing how a merger review unfolded can fit as well as a labor economist with a working paper.

Q2. Is a ProMarket piece peer-reviewed?

No. Editors review for fit, evidence, and clarity, and the piece carries weight through the author's credentials and sources. Treat it as policy commentary: it builds reach among journalists, agency staff, and fellow scholars. It counts differently from a journal article in hiring and promotion files, so plan the journal submission alongside it.

Q3. How long should a submission be?

Aim for 1,000 to 1,500 words for an essay. Shorter pieces work for narrow findings or timely reactions to a ruling. A draft well above that range signals that the argument needs pruning before it can hold a reader.

Q4. Should I pitch first or send a full draft?

Send a short pitch: the thesis in two or three sentences, the evidence behind it, your affiliation, and the planned word count. This lets editors judge fit in minutes. A full draft makes sense when the piece responds to a ruling or report published this week and speed decides whether the piece lands.

8. Conclusion

ProMarket fits researchers and practitioners whose work speaks to competition and market power and who want that work read by enforcers, journalists, and fellow scholars while the journal process runs. Pair the two: the blog carries the policy translation, the journal carries the archival record. Authors seeking a general consumer audience or peer-review credit should start elsewhere and treat this venue as a later step. The practical next step is small: pick one finding, write its thesis in two sentences, and check the site's recent posts for overlap before drafting anything longer.